Do you know that you can do payroll anytime and anywhere?

As a small business owner, you can even do your payroll on a business trip to Las Vegas or sitting at your cottage on a sunny Friday morning as long as you can surf the internet. If you and your business are moving around the world, online payroll software can help you access and change information from anywhere on earth. This greatly helps your business potential.

With online payroll services, you do not have to keep track of your federal and state payroll taxes as the payroll services automatically update your account when new tax rules and regulations take effect. Online payroll services can automatically calculate net pay, federal withholding tax, Social Security tax, Medicare, state and local payroll taxes. They provide direct deposit which is an easy and convenient way to pay employees. Using direct deposit not only eliminates the need to print pay checks but also is good for the environment. They can also remind you of when your payroll taxes are due and help you pay the taxes electronically. Another nice feature of online payroll software is that it provides you with comprehensive reports that show you each of your employees' income, taxes, and deductions for any given period of a year.

Online payroll software solutions take advantage of both in-house payroll software and outsourcing. In-house payroll software such as Intuit QuickBooks can do their payroll process anytime but not anywhere and with outsourcing, you may lose a kind of control of your payroll as changes to your payroll have to go through a service provider. Another disadvantage of outsourcing is that you will have less flexibility in how payroll is produced and what reports are generated (see In-House Payroll vs. Outsourcing).
Web-based accounting programs are offered by online payroll service providers on their web sites. You just need to log on and do your payroll. There’s no need to install any payroll software on your computer. You do not have to worry about setting up and maintaining your own in-house computer system. This can save you huge amounts of your time and money. Online payroll services make your small business payroll easy and quick. In minutes, you can do your payroll, create your paychecks and use the recommended direct deposit or print the paychecks on your own printer. You can also review the payroll amounts for your employees before processing the payroll.
Below are how the online payroll service providers (Paycycle and SurePayroll) quickly responded to the passed stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

PayCycle

“On March 9, 2009 -- PayCycle is delivering bigger paychecks to small business employees across the nation in response to the recently passed stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The new law reduces federal income tax for most employees, and that means bigger paychecks immediately for the majority of people paid through the PayCycle® system. With PayCycle, small business owners can easily create paychecks and conveniently deliver them via direct deposit or paper checks.”

"This quick delivery of the new stimulus package paycheck tax reduction demonstrates the PayCycle commitment to easy, convenient and accurate payroll for small and growing businesses," said Jim Heeger, president and CEO of PayCycle, Inc. "With PayCycle there is no desktop software to update or tax tables to download; the new tax rates are seamlessly integrated as part of PayCycle's always available, online service."

SurePayroll

“GLENVIEW, IL — March 9, 2009 — In anticipation of the upcoming "Making Work Pay" payroll tax adjustment in the federal stimulus act, online payroll service provider, SurePayroll announced that its small business customers will not have to worry about making any changes to their payroll set up.

Small business employers using SurePayroll don't have to do anything either before or after the federal stimulus credit takes effect. Customers can rest assured that SurePayroll will seamlessly handle all changes to payroll withholding requirements.”

HR World listed Top 10 Small-Business Payroll Solutions on January 3, 2008. Out of the 10 major players in the industry, four online payroll service providers were on the list. They are Paycycle, Surepayroll, Intuit Online Payroll, and Xpresspayroll. According to PC EDITORS' CHOICE, Paycycle and SurePayroll are the top 2 online Payroll service providers.

As Kathy Yakal, the author of PayCycle Plus (Fall 2008), said, “Payroll isn't the most glamorous part of running a business, but it doesn't have to be a terrible chore, either.” Online Payroll is great with many benefits but it is your choice if you want to use it or not.

Here is the summary of the benefits of online payroll services in general. It is your responsibility to confirm if the services are available when you go with an online payroll service provider.

1. Convenient and easy. You can do payroll anytime and anywhere.

2. No need to install payroll software on your computer.

3. Flexibility to choose reports. Online payroll services offer various reports. You can select and run the reports anytime.

4. Once you have it set up correctly and the data entry is accurate, the rest will be done accurately as well.

5. You can create your paychecks and use direct deposit or print the paychecks on your own printer.

6. You can export payroll data in multiple formats to integrate with accounting software such as QuickBooks, Quicken, Peachtree and Microsoft Money.

7. Easy access for employees. They may print pay stubs online by themselves.

8. Local, state and federal taxes will be accurately paid and filed on time.

9. Legal compliance. You do not need to update tax tables. Whenever there are local, state or federal legislation changes, it is the online payroll service provider’s responsibility to make sure your payroll is in full compliance with tax regulations.

Before you jump into any payroll software package, you should make sure:

1. The online payroll service provider has excellent reputation. You may get references from current clients of the payroll service provider you are considering to go with before you sign any contract. Try to find a reference in the same industry as your business is. You can also ask for a free trial and demo.

2. The online payroll service provider has an excellent customer support team. Excellent customer support is very important as sooner or later you will have a question or a problem.

3. Security. As payroll involves critical personal and business information, you should make sure the service provider guarantees the privacy of the data. All transactions are under secured connection channel.

4. Reliability. It will be very frustrated if the payroll website is unavailable when you want to do your payroll. You should make sure that they have redundant computer system and the system will be running 24/7 and had 99% uptime.